How Do We Know What We Know? - Dirt 166

What this episode covers

There are a lot of misconceptions in archaeology that are often perpetuated simply because people don't think about how the information they take for granted came to be. How do archaeologists know what people were doing in the past? Actually, how do we know anything at all? How do we know what didn't happen? Tune in and find out! Links * Archaeologists Dig For Clues (via WorldCat [https://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeologists-dig-for-clues/oclc/32272481] * Is there a Solutrean-Clovis Connection in the American Colonization? (ThoughtCo) [https://www.thoughtco.com/solutrean-clovis-connection-american-colonization-172667] * Who really discovered America? The Solutrean hypothesis is the latest in a long line of theories about the discovery of the New World (Skeptic) [https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA148278041&issn=10639330&it=r&linkaccess=abs&p=AONE&sid=googleScholar&sw=w&userGroupName=anon~dbd221a&v=2.1] * Five Breakthrough Signs of Early Peoples in the Americas (Sapiens) [https://www.sapiens.org/column/field-trips/earliest-people-north-america/] * The Buttermilk Creek Complex and the Origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas (Science) [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1201855] * People Were Chipping Stone Tools in Texas More Than 15,000 Years Ago (Scientific American) [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/texas-stone-tools-pre-clovis/] * Rejecting the Solutrean hypothesis: the first peoples in the Americas were not from Europe (Guardian) [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/21/rejecting-the-solutrean-hypothesis-the-first-peoples-in-the-americas-were-not-from-europe] * Man the Hunter, Woman the Gatherer? The Impact of Gender Studies on Hunter-Gatherer Research (A Retrospective) (The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers) [https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199551224.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199551224-e-032] * Mammoth FAQ (We Hunted the Mammoth) [https://wehuntedthemammoth.com/faq/] * Man the Hunter. The First Intensive Survey of a Single, Crucial Stage of Human Development—Man's Once Universal Hunting Way of Life (via Google Books) [https://books.google.com/books?id=8onGWvNpw18C&l] * Female hunters of the early Americas (Science Advances) [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd0310] * Did prehistoric women hunt? New research suggests so (The Conversation) [https://theconversation.com/did-prehistoric-women-hunt-new-research-suggests-so-149477] * This Prehistoric Peruvian Woman Was a Big-Game Hunter (Smithsonian) [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/9000-year-old-big-game-hunter-peru-prompts-questions-about-hunter-gatherer-gender-roles-180976218/] * Whole-genome sequencing of Atacama skeleton shows novel mutations linked with dysplasia (Genome Research) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5880234/] * The Starchild Project (New England Skeptical Society) [https://theness.com/index.php/the-starchild-project/] * Oldest case of leukemia discovered: Prehistoric female skeleton shows signs of this cancer (ScienceDaily) [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150831085609.htm] * Leukemia in Ancient Egypt: Earliest case and state-of-the-art techniques for diagnosing generalized osteolytic lesions (International Journal of Osteology) [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oa.2736] * A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments (Aeon) [https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-one-of-monuments]